The field of the invention is related generally to computing devices; internetworking, television, television-based entertainment (including prerecorded, recorded on request, and live broadcast television viewing); the Internet and television broadcast services (including over-air broadcast, cable and satellite television systems). More particularly, the field of the invention relates to an interactive multi media user interface (MMUI), which interacts with a user and conveys information through affinity character based presentation of Internet and broadcast media based content and is capable of aggregating second level content including ecommerce opportunities.
The number of homes, businesses and individuals using personal and portable computing devices has increased substantially. The Internet has become pervasive. Television is evolving into an enhanced experience where broadcast and scheduled programming can be supplemented with interactive components (typically using Internet related technologies such as HTML, JavaScript, et. al.). The development of standards (such as ATVEF—Advanced Television Enhancement Forum—ATSC DASE, and Europe's DVB) to allow these Internet technologies to synchronize the presentation of their content and software activities with traditional and non-traditional broadcast content permits the construction of a new generation of applications.
Chat has been a very popular medium at various online services (notably on the open Internet IRC networks such as Undernet and at services like AOL and Yahoo!) used as a mechanism for ad hoc communication between individuals.
The invention of a method for chat interaction using a simple television remote control—Click Chat™ (Zenith, U.S. Pat. No. 6,519,771, issued Feb. 11, 2003)—which allows viewers in command of a conventional television remote control or other simple selection device to respond to dialog without requiring the use of a keyboard. As the dialog proceeds, senders can incorporate optional responses into the chat stream using a simple encoding. Viewers can customize their own responses to arbitrary questions, statements or exclamations. These viewer-defined responses are offered to the viewer when the Click Chat™ system identifies a question, statement or exclamation in the chat system (in the simplest case by the detection of a query [?], period [.], or exclamation mark [!] in the incoming chat stream).
TV Chat™ is designed to support chat-based applications on the Microsoft Web TV® platform provides the client platform to enable the current invention (and the embodiments of the invention known internally as Chattercast™ and Future Radio™—please note that TV Chat™, Click-Chat™, Chattercast™ and Future Radio™ are trademarks of PEAR AVENUE, INC. formerly known as The Kiss Principle, Inc.). Chattercast™ is a more conventional chat experience where pre-scripted dialog is used to hide connection latency and connection state, to provide the viewer, in a mix of live and scripted dialog, with a seamless contextual dialog experience concurrent to television viewing, and to enhance advertising. Future Radio™ is a fuller embodiment of the invention, including a universe of characters that not only entertain and inform as they communicate with the viewer but also are able to provide an interface to applications and services.
The presentation of information regarding programmed content (television shows and internet events), guidance through and supplemental enhancement of content (including advertising), messaging, online banking, educational applications, e-commerce, are among the applications and services that can be represented by the interface. Traditionally, information regarding programmed content has been available through an “Electronic Programming Guide.” Interfaces to messaging applications, online banking, educational applications, e-commerce and so forth have been static and driven by functional forms and so-called “dialog boxes.” Future interfaces, if our vision is fulfilled, will be more entertaining and transactions with the interface will be contextual conversations.
Four primary communication architectures are evolving in the industry upon which the current invention can be delivered. The first is the architecture represented by the first Web TV Plus® deployments (please note that Web TV® is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation). This architecture combines an Internet client with a slow connection via a telephony modem with hardware that permits the reception of Television broadcasts in which ATVEF triggers are present. The second architecture is an extension of the first and permits the client to also receive broadband broadcasts of data (typically via satellite). The third architecture is broadband—i.e., a fast connection in both directions. The fourth architecture is wireless (permitting mobility).
These communication architectures are complicated by the storage architecture of the clients. All clients enjoy a limited amount of random access memory (ROM, RAM and FLASH) while some also carry a mass storage device such as a hard disk. We use different strategies (described in detail later) to ensure the availability of dialog depending on the combination of communication and client storage architecture.
In our invention, we are concerned with two characteristics of these communication architectures, connection state and latency. Connection state is whether a network connection is established by the client. Latency is the time required to complete the delivery of a required communication.
The goal of our methods is to provide the viewer with a continuous, instant-on, dialog experience. High latency and a disconnected state are hidden, to the degree possible, from the viewer.
Social Interfaces are a recent innovation (Nass and Reeves, “The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television, and New Media Like Real People and Places”, 1996, Cambridge Univ. Pr.; ISBN: 1575860538) but several attempts to implement social Interfaces have failed to prove effective (e.g., Microsoft's “Bob”). A fundamental problem facing attempts to build social interfaces for computing devices in the past has been how to make the interface compelling enough that the user will return habitually to the interface.
In the Future Radio™ service we add depth to the social interface by providing a unique and evolving fictional universe in which the social characters of the interface “dwell” and interact. This enables us to provide the viewer with a set of characters that cover personality types (dominant, submissive, friendly and unfriendly) and affinity groupings.
Our categorization method (i.e., the means by which we collate and present data in the dialog) is affinity based. Developing a character or live personality in our universe that appeals to seniors or alternatively a teen sports fan helps us determine what information, applications and services to present to classes of viewers and how to make that presentation.
Interface development remains plagued by the vagaries and talent of skilled human writers to provide compelling and stimulating dialog. However, in our invention, writers are directed toward the development of characters that prove most successful as a social interface.
AI and its branch Natural Language was an attempt a decade ago to build parsers that were English grammar based. A few products were produced that provided “English” interfaces to a variety of computer applications. The hope was that communication with computers would become simplified and easy enough for the common computer illiterate person to more easily use the computer. These all failed to bring the desired results. The reasons are not well understood. Interfaces have improved in the last decade to the current point and click Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) provided by MS Windows, Macintosh OS and others. On the TV side, we see the immergence of Web TV browser interfaces. With the merging of TV with PC and Internet, we are again at a crossroads on how best to design a “human” interface with this new technology.
The interfaces designed so far have primarily been designed from the standpoint of conventions established in the origins of computer design. These conventions do not readily apply when the interface is presented to a broader population of individuals unfamiliar with the conventions or unsuited to the methodologies. Early interface idioms were not designed for access by a population with diverse educational and economic backgrounds.
There is a similarity in the way the computer and the human mind work which is why “friendly” interfaces have been so hard to design and so long in coming. The interfaces thus far have been designed from the computer standpoint so that data that is stored in various forms can be sorted and retrieved. While the computer can retrieve only that which it has been fed, the human mind can not only retrieve whole sentences, but also can reconstruct them as it pleases, gild the words with emotion and play back the words with lyrical sound and oratorical fury, calling into service the entire body to support the words. It can cause the hands and arms to provide appropriate gestures, the face to take on the correct expression, the eyes to gleam in sync with the message being delivered and it can do this all on the fly, automatically. Thus, the presentation of the information can frequently be more important than the actual substance of the information. It is the presentation that focuses, maintains our attention. TV commercials attempt to draw immediate attention through the increase in sound volume, a cheap mechanism to obtain user attention. It is the fluctuation of sound volume and intensity, tone of voice, personal quirks and gestures, characteristic pauses or speaker delivery techniques and antics that keep us absorbed and interested in media content.
All interfaces today are devoid of emotional content yet there is a real need and even an attempt by users to embed the emotions into their content. Users react positively when they receive even token emotional content back in messages, even in its current weak attempts to transmit an emotional message. Each of us has seen a :) inside text to demark an attempt to jest or joke. An exclamation mark ! or BOLD letters to represent enthusiasm or danger. Information flow is not maximized by coming through in complete grammatically correct sentence structures. Information flow is maximized when it makes an impact on users. This can come in fits and starts, sot and loud, by head scratching and pausing, iambic rhythm, cadence or tempo. These are just some of the methods we use to convey emotion. It is this transmission of emotional content that is totally missing from current interfaces.
Most of us at one time or another have toiled trying to teach a child something that we thought was important and were frustrated when the child lost interest and turned off and quit. Later, much to our amazement, the child was effortlessly using this knowledge as if it were second nature. We may have learned that a “friend showed me how to do it.” Why is that and how did it happen we may ask. The answer is that a friend imparted that knowledge, albeit less precisely than you may have, in a way much less threatening to the child, perhaps more interesting but in all cases more efficient than you could have. Essentially this learning took place via a friendly, hence more efficient, user interface. Teaching and learning is still an art form. Tolstoy's firm belief was that art is the transmission of feelings. We have yet to learn how to do that in an interface, until now.
Comfort Level
Interfaces have to be learned, they are not natural. “Natural Language” technology proved unnatural to most people. Most people have an aversion to technology because they are not “comfortable” with the interface or the forced designed in which they must interact. Interfaces can make or break an otherwise very good and useful technology. The design of any good interface starts with understanding of the end user. This begins with the attempt to ease the learning of the functionality of the technology and how to interact with it, thus the more comfortable a user is with the interface, the quicker they learn to use the technology and be proficient. Not just proficient, but to enjoy, obtain satisfaction from and master. For this reason, most tutorials start out very simple and progress to the more difficult in stages.
Where there is encouragement, commiseration, laughter, entertainment, there is enjoyment, sustained participation, concentrated effort and maintenance of user attention. What is needed is a way to embed encouragement, commiseration, laughter and in short the full gamut of emotional content into an interface to extend the dimension of mind as well as of sight and sound.
All prior art interfaces are devoid of emotional content in presentation of information. Emotional content integrated with other content infuses users with knowledge they are striving to obtain through an interaction that the user can obtain it understand and internalize it. It is the emotional and personal element that captures and holds the user's attention and is the mechanism used to immerse the user in the interaction with the multi media user interface (MMUI). Prior art has limited access to and limited ways of presenting emotional content. In contrast, the invention MMUI engages the user in the type of emotional or personal interaction they are seeking to develop knowledge or entertain them by providing a virtual relationship with one or more affinity characters.
What is needed is the infusion of emotional energy to convey knowledge from Internet and media space content presented in the form of the user's own choosing. This mechanism may be in the form of a character provided from a list of a variety of celebrity, historical, personalities, stereotypical caricatures and the like, figures, that bring with them not only a domain of knowledge, but culture, mannerisms, attributes, method of speaking, personality, presentation techniques, etc., which a user can be comfortable with in interacting with TV and PC technology. Thus the integration of the media content with the presentation from a personality or character of a user's choice will contain the substance and emotional content that is missing from conventional GUIs. Emotional content can contain and convey the subliminal messages, which are vital to a user's interaction with a MMUI. The addition of emotional content captures, maintains, and focuses a user's interest. This emotional content comes through from the affinity character chosen by the user to deliver what ever it is the user is interested in.
Consumer Behavior Data Collection
Present interfaces raise substantial privacy issues. These include gathering information on the users under the guise of the need to learn how best to present the user with opportunities relevant or of interest to the user quicker. This leads to implementation of extensive database record keeping and constitutes a severe invasion of privacy depending on the depth and detail of dossier kept on individuals. By choosing a character affiliated with a body of knowledge or a particular personality, a user defines their possible likes, dislikes, interests, needs, market segments, purchasing behavior, specific affinity groups, behavior associations and more. These are unobtrusive means by which a user's potential needs and requirements can be better and more efficiently discovered and served. What are needed are unobtrusive methods by which we can identify user's preferences and needs.
User Friendly MMUI
What is needed is a new multimedia user interface (MMUI) that is capable of integrating broadcast and internet content and mediating that content in a user friendly fashion. The MMUI also should provide a new and more effective means for scanning the enormous quantity of broadcast content and internet information and programs and must be able to filter that content to provide each viewer with selected and specialized content of interest to an individual viewer.
What is also needed is a new MMUI which provides a user friendly way for a viewer to select content of particular interest and at the same time enable the program sponsors, internet service providers and other media advertisers to target specific audiences with advertising content tailored to the preferences of that audience.
It would be desirable to provide a user friendly MMUI with a way to automatically segregate viewers into affinity groups with the like preferences as this would greatly streamline content scanning and filtering of information. With reference to a well-known character, like Buzz Light-Year® from the popular motion picture Toy Story® (trademarks of Pixar Inc.), it would be more entertaining, stimulating, and easier to focus attention on a subject such as cosmology mediated and presented through the character of Buzz Light-Year®. Content would be filtered somewhat to correspond with Buzz's vocabulary and presented in his ebullient, overbearing comical manner. Without a doubt a Buzz Light-Year® or Albert Einstein will maintain the attention and focus of a viewer and all the while transferring wanted information in an entreating way.
A person interested in financial investment may prefer presentation through an investor personality such as Louis Rukeyser, Bob Brinker or the like, depending on the area of interest or personality preferred. Content is immersive because a user is conversing with a character he finds interesting, stimulating and or provocative. This “conversation” takes place with a character on the multi media device through a variety of dimensions, those being visual, audio and emotional. The mechanisms for visual and audio are well known, but the emotional dimension is carried via the character, the character's attributes and delivery style. These together provide immersion in the media interface.
What is needed is an affinity group character interface with enables a user to identify with a character and affinity group such that a virtual relationship between the user and character can develop and grow over time. A user can access information that is most relevant to the user, at his option via an interface which represents the user's affinity interests. A virtual relationship grows between the user and affinity group character. The user can interact with the character representative of the user's selected affinity group, thereby facilitating the transfer of information.